BR 

r&3 



THE YOUNG 
MAN FROM 
JERUSALEM 



WILLIAM C BAILANTINE 




Class 
Book. 



: c 



33 



GpightK?- 



cophmght deposft. 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM 
JERUSALEM 



BY 



WILLIAM G. BALLANTINE 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

($be fitoettfibe pre*? Cambti&0e 

1921 



fcfcVtf 



<di 



COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY WILLIAM G. BALLANTINE 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



OCT 26 1921 



©CLA627449 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 



/.* 



THE 
YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 



I was standing on a corner of the avenue wait- 
ing for a trolley when a nice-looking young 
man asked me a question about the cars for 
Thompson ville. Something foreign in his air 
and his accent puzzled me, and so I asked, 
at a venture, "Are you a Greek? " "No," 
he replied, "I am a Syrian from Jerusalem." 
For a moment I looked at him in silence 
while the sublime suggestions of that holy 
name swept over my mind. Here was one 
who had been born and had grown up where 

" Walked those blessed feet 
Which nineteen hundred years ago were nailed 
For our advantage on the bitter cross." 

How real Jesus must be to him ! 

[3 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

Then I said, " Things are going to be bet- 
ter in Jerusalem now, are n't they — now that 
the Turks have been driven out?" "No," 
he replied, " they will be worse. The country 
is going to be given over to the Jews. I should 
like to go back there and kill about ten Jews." 
1 'Why," I asked, " do you hate the Jews so?" 
" The Jews killed God," he said. "What is 
your religion? " I asked. "I am a Christian 
of the Orthodox Greek Church — the same 
as the Russian Church," he replied. 

Just then my car came and I had to go. 
But how I wished that I might have a little 
quiet time with that bright young man and 
tell him what Jesus lived for ! He is so well 
satisfied with his membership in an ancient 
orthodox Christian church. And yet that 
church has given him no inkling of what 
Christianity really is. It has taught him dogma 
and hate. Jesus never wished to kill anybody. 
He forgave his murderers. 

[4] 



II 

What I would have tried to say to that young 
man, had opportunity permitted, is what I am 
going to try to say now, hoping that at least a 
few may find it helpful. But it is like trying 
to describe sunlight. The very simplicity of 
the matter creates a difficulty at which my 
heart sinks. 

Jesus lived by Four Principles : — 
I. Inclusive Love; 
II. Humble Service; 

III. Freedom ; and 

IV. Common Sense. 

These Four Principles are all there is of 
Christianity, and the only hope of mankind 
is in their final universal prevalence over the 
earth. 

Back of the Principles lay, in the mind of 
Jesus, Three Fundamental Beliefs : — 
[5] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

I. God is like Men, only greater; 
II. Men are like God, only smaller; 
III. God and Men can find happiness only in 
Eternal Mutual Love. 

Jesus assumed the essential likeness of God 
and Men. He held that whatever good thing 
is true of any man must be all the more true 
of God. If an earthly father gives good gifts 
to his children, how much more will the heav- 
enly Father do so — better gifts and more 
promptly. If no earthly father can be happy 
while one child strays naked and hungry, no 
more can God. If the supreme joy of an 
earthly father is the restoration of the lost, 
then that must be the supreme joy of God. 

According to Jesus, every human being is 
a child of God, babies as much as grown-ups, 
women as much as men, the ignorant as 
much as the wise, Samaritans as much as 
Jews, sinners as really as saints. 

To be a child of God is an unalienable 
[6] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

attribute of humanity. Into the spiritual like- 
ness of God, every human being is born, and 
he has the same faculties of thinking, feeling, 
and willing, the same fundamental intuitions 
of the good, the beautiful, and the true, the 
same imperative need of love, that God has. 

That every human being is immortal and 
that the supreme question of each immortal 
life is its harmony with God was to Jesus so 
plain that it hardly occurred to him to make 
a separate affirmation of it. Deny it and the 
whole shining sphere of his thinking would 
vanish like a soap bubble. 

All followers of Jesus naturally accept his 
beliefs. But it is not the acceptance of these 
beliefs that makes them Christians. It is their 
living out his principles. Beliefs lie in the 
region of the intellect. Character depends on 
the heart. It is not what we think, but what 
we do, that counts. St. James tells us in his 
epistle that the demons hold a perfectly ortho- 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

dox notion of God. They are in a world 
where mistake on that point is impossible. 
The truth blazes before their eyes. But it 
only makes them shudder ; it does not make 
them love. 



Ill 



The first of Jesus' Four Principles is Inclu- 
sive Love. Note that word " inclusive." 

Before his time people loved their wives, 
their children, their friends, their country. 
But love always found a boundary, and be- 
yond that boundary stretched in every direc- 
tion the dark continent of hate. Jesus loved 
everybody. Of all men that ever lived, he was 
the first who dared to draw a great circle of 
love including all men and God. 

The Old Testament went far, but never so 
far as this. The Jews learned from it splen- 
did virtues — justice, purity, courage, gener- 
osity, neighborliness, family affection, pa- 
triotism, piety, heroism, the constancy of 
martyrs ; but not all-inclusive love. One 
psalmist exclaimed, "Do not I hate them, 
O Jehovah, that hate thee? And am not I 
[ 9] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

grieved with those that rise up against thee ? 
I hate them with perfect hatred. They are 
become mine enemies." Another psalmist, 
homesick in exile, exclaimed, " Daughter of 
Babylon, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee 
as thou hast served us ! Happy shall he be that 
taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the 
rock ! " Jesus lived on a wholly different plane. 

Eminent scholars often miss the obvious 
things. Some of them seem ready to admit 
that there was nothing really new in what 
Jesus had to say. His ideas had been held by 
many prophets and sages. They think that 
the work of Jesus was to make some mystical, 
tragic, bloody expiation for sin, or to reveal 
an incarnate God. 

They fail to see that Jesus, by his Four Prin- 
ciples, liberated and ennobled all the powers of 
all the people of all the world and united them 
in one blessed immortal family of one heav- 
enly Father. 

[ 10] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

Students of Comparative Religion some- 
times say, with a superior air of cosmopolitan 
intelligence, that each of the great religions 
has some great contribution to make to the 
final world religion. Probably this is true in a 
sense. I make no pretense to expert knowledge 
in this field. But after a pretty careful search 
through the encyclopaedia articles and the 
standard handbooks, written by the experts, I 
have failed so far to find any claim that any 
religious leader ever grasped these Four 
Principles or ever lived by them before Jesus 
did it. The Jews certainly never found them 
in the Old Testament. They were just as 
much shocked at them as the Greeks and 
Romans were. 

Jesus is incomparably the most original 
thinker of all history. Rightly, we date the 
years of our calendar from his birth, for his 
birth was the sunrise of humanity. Since his 
time an ever-increasing number, often, alas, 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

purblind through theology, have lived in fel- 
lowship with him and for his ends. His life 
was so radiant with all that can stimulate 
goodness and satisfy the deepest instincts of 
the soul that many have caught its spirit who 
could not analyze its secret and would, indeed, 
have been frightened at any clear statement 
of its principles. 



IV 

Jesus included in his love people of every age 
and class. He said, "Suffer the little children 
to come unto me ; forbid them not ; for of 
such is the kingdom of God." And he took 
them in his arms and blessed them, laying 
his hands upon them. Since that time a heav- 
enly glory circles the head of every little child 
with a radiance unseen before. The pictures 
of Jesus with the little children in his arms 
are the sweetest of all the pictures of him. 
No wonder that the birthday of Jesus is the 
festival of the glorification of childhood. Did 
you ever think why this is so? 

Jesus was the first man in history to rec- 
ognize the sacredness of every woman. He 
was the first perfect gentleman, the founder 
of ideal Chivalry. Since his time, we measure 
every man's claim to the title of gentleman 

[ 13] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

by his attitude toward women. This was n't 
so before. David was not measured by any 
such standard, nor Socrates nor Caesar. But 
now no man who thinks lightly of women, 
though he be a poet like Goethe or a musician 
like Wagner, can seem to us a gentleman. 

Until Jesus' time there was a double moral 
standard , if for men there could be said to be 
any standard at all. But since Jesus stooped 
and wrote with his finger on the ground of 
the temple court while a circle of conscience- 
stricken men melted away one by one and left 
the accused woman alone with the Saviour, 
the world's standard has quietly changed. 
Before his time it had never occurred to any- 
body that a sinful girl could ever be forgiven. 
There is, indeed, in the Old Testament, one 
passage — only one and that very doubtful — 
where some think that they find the idea. It 
is in the Book of Hosea. But the most natural 
interpretation is that the Prophet is giving an 
[14] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

allegorical representation of the Jewish nation's 
unfaithfulness and restoration, not thinking 
of hope for any individual fallen woman. 

In old times love to sinners was regarded 
as a fault, not as a virtue. It was a moral 
weakness. When a Hebrew psalmist drew up 
a list of the qualities that make up an ideal 
character, he, of course, represented him as 
one " in whose eyes a reprobate is despised." 
John the Baptist was a type of good old-fash- 
ioned righteousness. He was too holy to touch 
elbows with common men on crowded streets, 
and so kept out in the deserts alone until duty 
compelled him to come in to denounce sinners 
and call them to repentance. Jesus was the 
first among religious leaders to set the exam- 
ple of genial camaraderie. He accepted social 
invitations without any nice questioning as to 
who would be at the table. It scandalized the 
pious to see him dining with low company 
and not even shrinking from the touch of the 

[ 15 ] 



•• 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

unchaste. He was referred to with disgust as 
"the friend of sinners." 

The ancient world had little care for the 
feeble. Plato was interested only in the strong. 
He thought that unpromising babies should 
be exposed and that invalids had better hurry 
up and die. But blindness, lameness, paraly- 
sis, or any other bodily trouble always touched 
the heart of Jesus. He gave his time mainly 
to the relief of physical distress. The vast 
array of hospitals, asylums, and organiza- 
tions for welfare that now bless Christian 
lands, and are being spread by missionaries 
into the darker regions, all find their spring 
in what he said and did. 



Until the time of Jesus, love always stopped 
at racial boundaries, generally at the bound- 
ary of one's own race. Sometimes, there was 
a "most favored nation clause" which per- 
mitted a little partiality toward some admired 
or useful neighbors such as Hiram, King of 
Tyre, and his craftsmen. But the rule was 
hate for aliens. No attempt was made by any 
prophet of the Old Testament to inculcate 
love for every human being everywhere with- 
out regard to age, sex, race, morals, or reli- 
gion. Far from it. The Jews divided the 
world into Jews and "Dogs." The Greeks 
divided it into Greeks and "Barbarians." 
The Chinese divide it into Chinese and * * for- 
eign devils." Christians alone do not divide 
it. 

But the objection is made that we cannot 
[ 17] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

love everybody. " Would you have us love 
the Kaiser?" 

By the word "love" Jesus did not mean 
admiration or liking. He meant only the su- 
preme desire to benefit, to promote the wel- 
fare of every other person, to help every other 
person to realize his own highest possibilities 
and rise to the purpose of God in his crea- 
tion. Jesus started with the perception of the 
essentially godlike nature of every man. He 
saw the immeasurable value of personality — 
every personality. He saw that our Creator 
can never wear a worthy crown until every 
one of his jewels, every human soul, is set in 
it — a flawless diamond. 

What would a Christian do with the Kaiser ? 
Would he enjoy seeing him tortured, bend- 
ing over the battlements of heaven to look at 
the Kaiser in hell? Jonathan Edwards might 
think so, but we cannot. No, we would lift 
the Kaiser, and every lost soul like him, out 
[ 18 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

of their midnight of hate and set them in a 
true "place in the sun" — the transforming 
sunshine of God's love. 

Until Jesus' time, society felt only hot indig- 
nation against those who dared to break law. 
Criminals had forfeited all rights of humanity 
and had no ground of complaint if they were 
flung into dark, cold, wet, filthy dungeons to 
lie and rot. The treatment of prisoners is one 
of the infamies of the hideous past. But at 
last light begins to irradiate even the dun- 
geons. It all comes from the face of Jesus as 
it is reflected in the faces of such men as 
Thomas Mott Osborne. 

That a nation is no more under the law of 
love than a tiger is, and that any nation that 
is strong enough has a natural right to rise 
upon the bloody ruins of all other nations, 
was Prussian doctrine. The thought of Jesus 
is just the opposite. A league of nations is 
the latest, sublimest conception in govern- 
[19] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

ment — a league which shall abolish war and 
guarantee to every feeblest group of our race 
safety and a share in all of the best things. 
The league of nations is the political expres- 
sion of Jesus' principle of all-inclusive love. 

Not "America first" any more than 
c ' Deutschland ueber alles ' ' ! No ; James 
Russell Lowell long ago echoed the true sen- 
timent in his Yankee dialect, — 

" An' ' All men up,' say we, 
White, yaller, black and brown, John : 
Now which is your idee " ? 

"All men up" is the only possible idea for 
Christians. 



VI 

Jesus loved God in the same direct personal 
way in which he loved men. "Inclusive 
love," of course, included God, the greatest 
and the most lovable of all. 

Christianity is by no means "mere ethics." 
That is, it is not just the application of the 
Golden Rule to human relations. It is, first 
of all, a vital companionship with the infinite 
personality in whom we live and move and 
have our being. 

No one has begun to understand Jesus who 
does not perceive that the companionship of 
God was the supreme abiding fact of his inner 
life. When Jesus walked in the fields he 
walked in God's world with God. The lilies 
were wearing the finer-than-royal raiment in 
which God had clothed them. The birds 
were feeding on what his love had scattered 

[21 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

for them. Even the falling sparrow, appar- 
ently abandoned to a cruel fate, was not really 
outside the heavenly Father's tender care. 

And far beyond the worth of many spar- 
rows was the worth to God of every human 
son and daughter of his, even the most darkly 
sin-stained. Participation in the joy of God 
over every returning penitent inspired and 
sustained the heart of Jesus in all his tireless 
seeking and saving of the lost. Into the par- 
able of the Prodigal Son he crystallized, as 
into the world's purest jewel of literature, the 
supreme article of his faith and the supreme 
motive of his life. 

To Jesus the heart of the Gospel was not 
his own cross. It was the boundless love of 
God and the coming of God's kingdom of 
love among men. God was inviting, welcom- 
ing, saving. 

" There 's a wideness in God's mercy 
Like the wideness of the sea." 

[22 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

But to-day a good many people, and espe- 
cially those of the educated class, find it almost 
impossible to believe in this love of God and 
to reciprocate it in a personal way. At this 
point they cannot follow Jesus. His way of 
thinking about God seems to them to belong 
to the childhood of the world. They call it 
"anthropomorphic." Science, they say, has 
pushed the boundaries of the universe so far 
outward, has enlarged so vastly all of our 
conceptions, has revealed so many complexi- 
ties, such tremendous energies and such in- 
exorable laws, that the notions of the time of 
Jesus will not do any longer. And particularly, 
they think, the notion of a God "like a man, 
only far greater," has been absolutely out- 
grown. 

But is this so ? Of course in saying, ' ' a 
God like a man," we do not mean a God 
with a body like a man's. We mean a God 
who is spiritually like us. 
[23] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

What is science but our unraveling of the 
thought that runs through the universe ? Crys- 
tals in all their variety can be classified ac- 
cording to our geometry. The stars in their 
courses move according to our mathematics. 
So there is thought in the universe, and it is 
thought just like ours, only finer and vaster. 
And there is beauty in the universe just 
such as our hearts love. And there is un- 
deniably ' ' a force not ourselves that makes 
for righteousness ' ' — righteousness that ac- 
cords with our consciences. 

Now, soberly, what are these but the proofs 
of a personality like our own ? If the universe 
were not made by a thinker like us, we could 
not make sciences. If he were not infinitely 
greater than we, he could not make the uni- 
verse. 

Obviously creation is a process now in 
progress. We see it evolving. Whether it 
ever had a beginning or will ever have an 
[24] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

end, we have no basis for assertion. But we 
find ourselves now in a universe which re- 
veals a living God. 

Sir Isaac Newton said that in accounting 
for anything we must assume a * ' vera causa ' '; 
that is, we must assume something like what 
we know to be a real cause in similar cases. 
Now of all things what each of us knows best 
is personality. We know it far better than 
we know matter. Each one of us wakes at 
the beginning of life to the consciousness that 
he is thinking, feeling, and willing ; that is, 
he is a person. Each one finds that he has a 
certain amount of power at his disposal. To 
assume that the thought and power we see 
manifested about us belong to personality is 
to assume the only ' ' vera causa ' ' with which 
we have any acquaintance. 

We cannot claim to see God. But then we 
never see any person. We see material bodies 
acting in such ways that, judging from the 
[25] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

analogy of ourselves, we have no doubt that 
persons are expressing themselves through 
them. Every now and then one or another 
of these bodies ceases so to act. And then, 
although the body is there just the same as 
before, we infer that the person has departed 
and we call the body dead. So the body never 
was the person. It was merely a machine 
which the person temporarily used. 

We can see God just as truly as we can 
see any other person. For we can see the 
things on which he acts. Imagine some fa- 
vored individual to have been admitted often 
into the studio of the sculptor Saint-Gaudens, 
but only when the artist was away. Day after 
day he would have seen those wonderful 
statues taking shape, Sherman, Farragut, 
Lincoln, and the rest. He would have come 
to know intimately the great patriotic heart of 
the man whose chief ambition was to put into 
deathless bronze the noblest traits of the no- 
t 26] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

blest Americans. If finally this visitor had 
been permitted to meet Saint-Gaudens, would 
he not have felt that he already knew the 
sculptor from his works as he never could 
know him from looking at his face and figure? 
So we may know God, if only we allow 
ourselves, as Jesus did, to see him in the lilies 
and the birds, and in the souls of men. 

44 That delicate forest flower, 
With scented breath and look so like a smile, 
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould, 
An emanation of the indwelling Life, 
A visible token of the upholding Love, 
That are the soul of this great universe." 

"Seems," yes, it undoubtedly is, "the visi- 
ble token " which Bryant took it to be. 

Many people feel that the word ' ' person- 
ality " in some way connotes limitation. This, 
however, is not the case. Some stars are 
small; but the word "star" does not neces- 
sarily imply smallness. One star differs from 
[27] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

another star in glory and there are stars that 
outshine the sun. So with personalities. Some 
are, indeed, small and,.act now only through 
little human bodies. But there is no philo- 
sophic difficulty in believing that there is one 
transcendent personality. 

When even a faint apprehension of the In- 
finite Personality begins to dawn on a soul, 
then the reasonableness of the first command- 
ment, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with. all thy heart and with all thy soul and 
with all thy mind and with all thy strength," 
becomes self-evident, and the glad, spontane- 
ous impulse to give that love becomes irre- 
sistible. 

Many good people, unable to think satis- 
factorily about God, are trying to satisfy their 
hearts with love of their fellow men. Abou 
ben Adhem, in Leigh Hunt's charming poem, 
troubled to find that his name is not on the 
roll of those who love the Lord, begs humbly 
[ 38 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

to be written by the angel as one who loves 
his fellow men. The next night he finds to 
his joy that his name leads on the roll of those 
whom love of God has blessed. 

A great truth is poetically expressed here, 
but it is often misunderstood. The truth is 
that every loving heart loves God, even 
though not aware of it. The poet does not 
mean that the Infinite comes to personality 
only in the finite, and that so love to men is 
love to God. That is a pantheistic conception 
very far from the mind of Jesus. 

Some suppose that they think more mod- 
ernly and more worthily of God by making 
him an abstraction. They say, "God is not a 
person, he is Truth . ' ' Such people should ex- 
amine a little more closely into the meaning of 
words. "Truth " is but the relation between 
fact and the representation of fact. A portrait 
has truth if it is like the sitter. To say that 
God is truth is to use words without meaning. 
[29 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

Undeniably grave difficulties rise in die 
way of accepting Jesus' belief about God. 
Unsolved problems confront us on every hand. 
How shall we account for the agony and death 
of millions? Dark and dreadful enigmas, ap- 
parently irreconcilable with the supposition 
that love rules the universe, stand like rows of 
sphinxes on either hand as we approach his 
throne. The sparrow falls on the ground and 
it does not seem to him, or to the other spar- 
rows, as if any one cared. 

But could we, newcomers on this shore, 
fairly expect to understand the whole conti- 
nent all at once ? Every baby on the threshold 
of life, after countless sweet proofs of mother's 
love, comes to the day of weaning. Then 
mother seems to forget. The baby faces the 
terrible dilemma of accepting a dark mystery 
or giving up faith in mother. In the end he 
always chooses to hold on to mother ; and the 
baby is right. 

t 30] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

When all the dreadful enigmas have been 
admitted, there remains a vast preponderance 
of evidence for good. Take the one fact of 
motherhood. Consider the millions on mil- 
lions of mothers who at this hour, after pay- 
ing the initiation fee of anguish, and now 
worn down by incessant care and loss of sleep, 
start up at every feeble cry to attend the 
baby, feed the baby, smile at the baby, 
croon to the baby — consider this amazing 
miracle of pure love going on night and day 
all over the world, and then doubt, if you 
can, that Love is the strongest force in the 
world. 

So we find that reasoning upon the data 
of modern science, far from weakening, pow- 
erfully reenforces, the ancient faith in a per- 
sonal God, just like ourselves except that he 
is Infinite, Fountain of all energy, Thinker 
whose thoughts Science reverently thinks 
after him, Creator of beauty whose loveliness 
[31 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

Art ceaselessly labors to reflect, perfect in 
love and so approved by every human con- 
science. 

But we are not left to analogies and sci- 
entific inferences. We have independent, di- 
rect, and mystical evidence of God. There is 
a kind of perception which is not one of the 
five senses that connect us with the material 
world. By this we perceive that God is near. 
A great many people have this perception of 
God and yet do not dare to trust it. 

But he who would fly must dare to leave 
the ground. Spiritual things must be known 
spiritually. Why spend years in the valley of 
the shadow of death and never dare to say, 
" Thou art with me"? In all the ages no one 
who has ventured to trust the normal instincts 
of his own soul has ever failed to feel beneath 
him the everlasting arms. It is for each one 
of us for himself to make the great adventure 
of faith — no reckless self-delusion, but the 

[ 32] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

most calm and reasonable act possible to 
man. 

At this point my reader may be ready to 
break out with the remonstrance that this 
marvelous soul-passion, so tender, so respon- 
sive, so loyal, so strong — gentle enough to 
enfold a child and daring enough to lay hold 
on the Infinite — that this conception goes far 
beyond any reasonable definition of the com- 
mon little word "Love." 

No, our ideas are enlarging all the time, 
but that does not require the invention of new 
names. The word "star" means far more 
now than it did on the plains of old Chaldasa ; 
but it is still good enough. 

When Jesus talked, using common speech, 
his vocabulary marched forth like a proces- 
sion of angels. Men rose from sitting at his 
feet and found such words as "father," 
"son," "husband," "wife," "neighbor" 
— even the despised name ' ' Samaritan ' ' — 
[ 33 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

permanently transfigured. And so the common 
word "Love," so long profaned on unclean 
lips, has been redeemed and glorified and em- 
powered to express the noblest thing on earth 
and in heaven. 



VII 

The second Fundamental Principle of Jesus 
is Humble Service. Love, which is his first 
principle, is but the will to service. So the 
second principle is in a way merely the first 
in action. Christian love is far from being 
mere pleasant feeling and indulgent good na- 
ture. It is dynamic. It sees needs and has- 
tens to supply them. No task is too repulsive. 
Where filth is and vermin and foul air and 
infection and threatening death, there Love 
enters in a white robe and with a red cross on 
her breast, gentle and patient and unterrified. 
Service alone is greatness, Jesus said. No 
titles, honors, decorations, or offices that 
others can bestow on a man can in the least 
degree make him great. Jesus told his fol- 
lowers that even he had no power to promote 
any favorites to seats of honor. Popular usage 
attaches the title "The Great" to many 

[ 35 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

names in history. We hear of Alexander the 
Great, Herod the Great, Peter the Great of 
Russia, and Frederick the Great of Prussia. 
But the title only indicates that they had 
power. A man may be great as a prize-fighter, 
as a soldier, as an artist, and yet be person- 
ally a small man. Mere possession of powers 
and talents no more enlarges a man than the 
mere legal ownership of millions of money. 
Absolute greatness can be nothing but moral 
greatness, and that is nothing but the spirit of 
loving service. Napoleon probably possessed 
the greatest military and administrative gen- 
ius of all history. But Napoleon himself was an 
unusually small man, belittled by selfishness. 
Jesus came not to be ministered unto, but 
to minister and to give his life a ransom. This 
was his greatness. It was the whole of his 
greatness. For many centuries, the stories of 
his miracles were unquestioned and they were 
relied on as proofs of his greatness. Then, as 
[ 36] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

modern physical science advanced, many 
thoughtful people ceased to believe in mira- 
cles. Now, under the influence of Sir Oliver 
Lodge and scientists of his type, the pen- 
dulum of opinion seems swinging back some- 
what toward faith. There is here an exceed- 
ingly interesting historical and scientific 
question ; but it does not bear closely on the 
greatness of Jesus. If he was really able to 
walk on the water, to still a storm, and to 
create food, that does not much concern us. 
The compassion that he felt for that multi- 
tude of ignorant, shepherdless, suffering peas- 
ants — such sympathy as no man of genius 
in all previous history had ever felt for a com- 
mon crowd — that compassion made him 
great. It is that compassion kindling from 
breast to breast that is going to save the world. 
Any man who will take the trouble to learn 
the laws of nature, any Edison or Marconi, 
can work miracles. 



VIII 

The third and fourth Fundamental Principles 
of Jesus are Freedom, and Common Sense. 
These must be considered together because 
they cannot be understood apart. Which 
comes logically first, it is idle to discuss. 
Love is the mainspring of the Christian life. 
Humble Service is its necessary expression. 
The truer the love the humbler will be the 
service. Mother love stops at nothing. It is 
therefore our highest ideal of love. But what 
shall the Christian who feels love's impulse 
have as a programme of life? 

The various great religions have imposed 
upon the faithful many ceremonial duties. 
They have required temples, sacrifices, pro- 
cessions, asceticisms, sacred celebrations, and 
what not. The Jewish law, the "Torah," 
built up by the ingenuity of generations of 
[38] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

rabbis until it now fills twelve folio volumes, 
makes the whole of life a meticulous ritual. 
Christian churches, claiming the authority 
of Jesus, have also elaborated their burden- 
some systems. But what has the burning of 
wax candles in churches to do with the Four 
Principles ? Jesus knew of nothing that God 
wants of us except service to his other 
children. 

What shall a Christian proceed to do? 
Jesus would say, "Open your eyes to the 
needs of people around you. Look as I did 
on the sheep that have no shepherd. Think 
out the problem of service according to your 
own common sense in perfect freedom. Let 
no venerable tradition handed down from the 
fathers, no supposed divine law in Holy 
Scripture, lead you to do anything that seems 
useless or unkind or unreasonable, or inhibit 
the impulse to anything that seems good." 

His ideas of freedom and common sense 
[ 39 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

were just as astounding to the people of that 
time as his ideas of loving everybody and be- 
coming great only by service. In fact these 
four ideas were so novel and so contrary to 
ordinary thinking that even the Christian 
Church through the long centuries of its his- 
tory has hardly lived by them at all. The 
Orthodox Greek Church, which educated that 
young man in Jerusalem, gave him no vision 
of any one of them. Dare we talk of freedom 
and common sense where immemorial tradi- 
tion of the pious has inculcated unquestion- 
ing faith? 



IX 

The Sabbath was an unspeakably precious 
and sacred institution to the Jews. Rather 
than violate its holy rest many had suffered 
even unto death and had endured what was 
worse than death, the pain of seeing the suf- 
ferings of loved ones whom on that day it 
would have been a sin to relieve. For the 
commandment to keep the Sabbath holy was 
one of the "Ten Words," the center and 
citadel of the law. "In it thou shalt not do 
any work," was the mandate and no excep- 
tion was suggested as possible. 

Once, when Jesus' disciples were hungry on 
the Sabbath, they, with his sanction, plucked 
the heads of grain and ate. This was undenia- 
bly work. So the whole question of Sabbath- 
keeping and the larger question of exact obe- 
dience to Bible words had to be faced. 
[41 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

What Jesus virtually said to those people 
was: "If you were free to use your own 
common sense in this case, what would you 
do? Well, you are free, in this and in every 
case. No matter what the law says. It must 
have been intended for the good of man. So, 
whenever you think that you can do more 
good to man by ignoring the words of the 
law, do so. Common sense is the only infalli- 
ble rule of faith and practice." After such 
amazing sentiments what could Jesus expect 
but death? As the Jews viewed it, he was 
trying to sweep away the whole foundation 
of revealed religion. 

It had not occurred to them that it might 
be possible to look through the outward letter 
of the law into its spirit and to criticize the 
letter by the spirit. To them every rule was 
a separate, inexplicable, independent, immu- 
table fiat of Jehovah. 

Consider the matter of food. To eat cor- 
[42] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

rect food, " kosher " food, was to a Jew just 
as much a part of religion as honesty or chas- 
tity. Pork was absolutely forbidden. Many 
Jewish martyrs had died rather than take the 
flesh of "the unclean animal" into their 
mouths. No one thought of asking, " What 
is wrong with pork?" God had tabooed it. 
1 ' Theirs not to reason why ' ' any more than 
if they had belonged to the Light Brigade. 
Jesus said: "Let us think this thing out. 
Food goes through the alimentary canal and 
out, doesn't it? Then it never touches the 
seat of personality, does it? So no food can 
defile a man morally, can it?" 

Thus he applied common sense to all reli- 
gious taboos. In so doing he canceled two 
chapters in the Bible. But what of that? 



X 

Jesus was the first absolutely free man that 
ever walked the earth. He looked with his 
own eyes. He thought with his own brains. 
He never did anything that his own common 
sense did not approve. The Quakers, in their 
doctrine of the "Inner Light," have come 
very near to his idea. No ancient custom, 
no rule of Holy Scripture, bound Jesus fur- 
ther than he could see the reasonableness of 
it in his situation. 

One day in the year all pious adult Jews in 
good health abstain from food for the whole 
twenty-four hours. It is an inviolable custom. 
There are also minor fasts. Once, when a fast 
day came round, Jesus' disciples went on eating 
as usual. ' ' Why don't they fast ? ' ' exclaimed 
the scandalized beholders. " They don't feel 
like it to-day," was the nonchalant reply. 
[44] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

The astounding freedom of Jesus has been 
as little understood and as little acted upon 
by professed Christians as his all-inclusive 
love. The other day, in reading " Adventures 
in Friendship," by David Grayson, I was 
delighted to run across an admirable state- 
ment of this principle which so well fits our 
purpose that I must take the liberty of quot- 
ing it. I like it all the better because Ray 
Stannard Baker does not seem conscious that 
he is presenting one of the four fundamentals 
of Christianity : 

"I believe in the Open Road in religion, in 
education, in politics : there is nothing really 
settled, fenced in, nor finally decided upon 
this earth. Nothing that is not questionable. 
I do not mean that I would immediately tear 
down well-built fences or do away with estab- 
lished and beaten roads. By no means. The 
wisdom of past ages is likely to be wiser than 
any hasty conclusion of mine. I would not 
[45] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

invite any other person to follow my road 
until I had well proven it a better way toward 
truth than that which time had established. 
And yet I would have every man tread the 
Open Road. I would have him upon occasion 
question the smuggest institution and look 
askance upon the most ancient habit. I would 
have him throw a doubt upon Newton and 
defy Darwin. I would have him look straight 
at men and nature with his own eyes." x 

Freedom is not a mere corollary from 
Christianity, an incidental deduction, a mat- 
ter aside, a small bonus distributed to holders 
of preferred stock. It is part of the original 
essence of Christianity. It is one of the four 
columns that sustain the central dome. With- 
out it Christianity is sure sooner or later to 
degenerate into a formalism, a superstition, a 
bigotry, a bondage, an inquisition, a blind 
hatred, a machine of tyranny. 

* Adventures in friendship, by David Grayson, page 52. 



XI 

The principle of common-sense freedom with 
which Jesus handled the laws of the Old 
Testament is obviously universal and must 
be applied in the same way to his own say- 
ings. Many Christians have followed Jesus 
so far as to break away from bondage to the 
letter of the Old Testament who dare not 
break away from the letter of the New. They 
treat the New Testament in the same me- 
chanical way in which the Jews treated the 
Old. So they escape Jewish literalism only to 
fall into Christian literalism, which is as bad, 
or worse. 

For Jesus was fond of Oriental hyperbole ; 
that is, stating his points in the boldest im- 
agery possible and leaving the necessary "res- 
ervations" to the intelligence of the hearer. 
He seemed to wish to startle his hearers into 
[47] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

thinking. So his word pictures are like poster 
drawings. And he never went back to modify 
any extravagant statement or mention the ex- 
ceptions. The nearest he ever came to quali- 
fication was to make a second extravagant 
statement flatly contradicting the first. 

Treating these rhetorical exaggerations of 
Jesus like sober rules, Christian priests have 
converted the "law of liberty" into some- 
thing worse than the Jewish " yoke of bond- 
age." 

Take the matter of divorce. Jesus declared 
without qualification that there should be no 
divorce. He was aiming at the protection of 
the home. Marriage, he taught, is instituted 
by God and must not be dissolved at the 
whim of man. But Christian priests have 
refused to apply common sense here, just as 
the rabbis refused to apply common sense 
to the law of the Sabbath. Claiming to be 
guided by reverence for the words of Jesus, 
[48 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

they have refused to free pure women from 
degenerate and diseased men, and have 
thought that by so doing they were enhancing 
the sacredness of marriage in popular esteem ! 
Oh, the hideous, sanctimonious cruelty by 
which uncounted thousands of innocent peo- 
ple have been made martyrs in the name of the 
Saviour whose only thought was freedom ! 



XII 

The whole painful trouble of Pacifism arises 
from the same distressing confusion of many 
noble minds, the failure to see that Jesus 
would have us apply common sense to his 
rhetoric. For the most part these people do 
use their common sense. The Quakers do 
not give away all their property to the first 
beggar who asks for it, although Jesus in 
words commands this in the very paragraph 
in which he teaches non-resistance. What a 
pity to apply common sense only to one part 
of the paragraph and not the other part ! 

Common sense is just as indispensable to 
Christianity as love is, just as an intelligent 
driver is as necessary to an automobile as 
gasoline in the engine. Love impels, but 
common sense must steer. What a waste of 
industry has been made in investigating what 

[50] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

the Bible says on practical questions, when a 
brief application of common sense to the sit- 
uation would have cleared up everything! 
Wisdom can never be reached by the mere 
study of words, even the words of Jesus. 



XIII 

Common sense is the same thing as science. 
Science is rationalized knowledge. Men have 
the power to observe, classify, generalize, and 
infer. Common sense is the normal action of 
the mind on all the facts that can be observed. 
There are not two roads to the knowledge of 
duty — the Bible road and the scientific road. 
The rules which the Bible contains are to be 
used in the light of science or they cannot be 
used rightly at all. It is a mistake to say that 
science confirms the Bible, or that the Bible 
harmonizes with science. They are not two 
contrasted things. Christianity commands us 
to use science to find out what is Christian. It 
does not undertake to tell us what duty is but 
says, Ask science. 

Whether Sunday baseball is right never 
can be settled by studying the Bible. It can 
[52 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

only be settled by studying in the light of the 
Bible the needs of the men who are going to 
play it and of the crowd that is going to 
watch the game. Had Jesus regarded only 
the words of the fourth commandment he 
would have left the hungry and the sick un- 
relieved. A Christian must have eyes. He 
must have courage. He must be a Pragma- 
tist, and when he finds something in Scripture 
that won't work, he must discover for him- 
self something else that will work. 

Many of the most foolish and cruel things 
in history have been done by sincere men who 
did not understand the four elementary prin- 
ciples of Jesus and who thought they were 
doing his will when they shut off the light of 
their own intelligence and denied divorces to 
outraged women or refused to fight to protect 
the weak from armed ruffians. 

An eminent missionary from India told me 
that in that country many families have been 

[ 53 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

broken up and many wives cast out to degra- 
dation and destitution because the mission- 
aries insist that every follower of Jesus shall 
be baptized. The Hindoos are willing enough 
that their wives shall lead Christian lives, but 
ancient prejudice forbids that they should 
consent to a ceremony like this, which is just 
on the level of their own heathen rites. The 
missionaries, however, standing firm on the 
words of Jesus, refuse to dispense with 
the form. 

There are good scholars who doubt whether 
Jesus ever gave that command for baptism 
with the trinitarian formula which stands in 
the last chapter of Matthew. It seems to have 
too much of the theological and ritualistic 
flavor of the next generation. But be that as 
it may, even if he did give the injunction, his 
own great principle would justify us in using 
common sense in the application of it. 

When I was a child we used to commit to 

[54 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

memory and recite Mrs. Hemans's thrilling 
poem about the boy that ' ' stood on the burn- 
ing deck." These verses were supposed to 
celebrate the highest type of boyish fidelity. 
Young Casabianca's father, the captain of a 
French ship at the battle of the Nile, had 
stationed the boy at a certain post on the 
deck. In the progress of the battle the cap- 
tain was shot ; the French were defeated ; all 
the survivors left the ship, which was in 
flames evidently soon to explode. But the 
boy would not leave without his father's com- 
mand and of course perished in the explosion. 
This ideal of unreasoning faithfulness is just 
the opposite of Christianity and should not 
have been held up to us children. 



XIV 

These Four Principles are the ' * quadrilateral ' ' 
of fortresses which preserve the integrity of 
Christianity. Surrender any one of them and 
at once surprising disasters ensue. 

This was made strikingly apparent at the 
very beginning of Christianity by the case of 
Saint Paul. He clearly understood three of the 
principles, but not the fourth. To the first 
principle, Love, he gave the most beautiful 
chapter he ever wrote. Of the second princi- 
ple, Humble Service, his sacrificial life was 
one long object lesson. The third principle, 
Freedom, set his enthusiasm into a blaze. In 
defense of it he wrote a white-hot letter to his 
Galatian converts, who, under influences 
emanating from Jerusalem, seemed drifting 
into the bondage of ritualism. With anathe- 
mas, reproaches, sarcasms, theological argu- 
[56] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

ments, and tender pleadings, he called them 
back to Christian liberty. 

But here Paul himself was at a sad disad- 
vantage. He had never understood the fourth 
principle — the principle of common sense. 
He knew that Christians were free, but he 
did not know why. He was himself Jerusalem- 
trained, and had the same mechanical con- 
ception of law that his opponents had. He 
had never dared to criticize the law. The un- 
changeableness of the laws of the Medes and 
Persians was not so fixed as that of the 
"Torah." 

What, then, could be the basis of Chris- 
tian freedom? Paul thought and thought. 
Jesus had been accustomed to brush aside 
anything in the law that did not suit him by a 
simple appeal to common sense. This course 
was not open to Paul. For him escape from 
legal bondage was possible only through some 
legal device. At last he thought out an an- 
[ 57] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

swer. The law demanded either obedience or 
death. Well, there had been a death — the 
death of Jesus. So the law had been honored, 
paid off, as it were. Henceforth Christians 
were free to neglect circumcision, to eat pork, 
and to work on the Sabbath. 

The theory is monstrous. Paul forgot that 
the punishment of the innocent would be an 
insult to law, not a satisfaction. He forgot 
that law is not something like a mortgage 
that can be paid off, so that the obligation to 
obey it terminates. And then, too, after hav- 
ing supposedly freed Christians from all obli- 
gations under the law, he was always in end- 
less difficulties to explain why only the foolish 
and antiquated parts of it had lost their force. 

In fact the Jews had never had any such 
perfect divine law as the Jerusalem rabbis 
had taught Paul to believe they had. In the 
course of history they had accumulated a lot 
of regulations, wise and otherwise. Jesus dis- 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

posed of the antiquated and senseless ones by 
epigrams. He said, "You can't put new 
wine into old skins, can you ? You can't patch 
unshrunk cloth on to old garments, can you? 
You would n't have people fast at a wedding, 
would you ? ' ' Where Jesus found all the re- 
lief he needed in epigrams, Paul was driven 
to erect vast derricks of theological theory to 
lift him out of his embarrassments. In fact, 
Paul himself could never get away from the 
rabbinic conception of law, and so he em- 
bedded that conception in the center of the 
beautiful message he had received from Jesus. 
The letter of every law must be enforced, he 
thought. God himself could forgive no one. 
Blood was demanded by the law. If not the 
blood of the guilty, then the blood of the 
innocent. The curse must fall somewhere. 
If not on the head of the guilty, then on the 
head of the innocent. This grisly conception 
Paul made the heart of his gospel, and for 
[ 59] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

the vast majority of Christians it remains the 
heart of the gospel to this day. 

Luther adopted Paul's theory as the es- 
sence of the gospel, and with it led off the 
Reformation into the dry wilderness of the- 
ology. Evangelists preach this now. Many of 
our popular hymns sing it. Instead of sing- 
ing of love and service and freedom, they 
sing of substituted punishment, to the dis- 
honor of God and the confusion of men's 
minds. 

Some learned writers think that the idea 
of freedom, which is so prominent in Mark's 
story of the life of Jesus, betrays the influ- 
ence of Saint Paul. Just the opposite. Mark 
bases freedom on Jesus' principle of common 
sense — a profound and eternal principle. Paul 
based freedom on the artificial principle, the 
legal fiction, of substituted punishment. The 
freedom wherewith Christ set us free, Paul 
talked eloquently of, but never understood. 



XV 

An observer in an airplane circling the globe, 
and looking down on the heights and depths 
of human misery on the several continents, 
could easily say which one of the principles 
of Jesus is most conspicuously lacking in each 
of the lands. 

Vast dark areas are in the slavery of igno- 
rance, superstition, and tradition. They need 
intellectual freedom — the freedom of com- 
mon sense. 

The Chinese are weighed down by exag- 
gerated reverence for their ancestors. In India 
thousands die every year from snake bite, but 
superstition forbids the killing of cobras. In 
Egypt mothers dare not brush away the flies 
from the eyes of their babies, and so dreadful 
eye diseases and blindness prevail. In Mexico 
an illiterate and priest-ridden population is 
[ 61 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

trying the hopeless experiment of republican 
government. Though nominally Christians, 
they know nothing about intelligence or 
freedom. 

Germany's case is far different from that 
of these lands. She carried popular education 
and scientific boldness further than any other 
nation. But, alas, she left out the principle 
of all-inclusive love. For love she substituted 
pride and vanity. The Germans are intelli- 
gent enough to kill snakes, but they feed on 
the poison of hate. No better definition of 
Hell could be devised than just the German 
formula — fearless ingenuity and tireless en- 
ergy in the service of pitiless selfishness. Sci- 
ence unrestrained by love is henceforth the 
nightmare of the world. Ignorance and super- 
stition are toothless enemies compared with 
that saber-toothed tiger, educated selfishness. 

And America — which of the principles 
does she lack? All to a painful degree. But 
[ 62] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

perhaps most conspicuously the principle of 
service. Our national danger is eagerness for 
money for self-indulgence. 

Men who were in the army speak of the 
time they were "in the service." It is a 
beautiful and most Christian phrase. Laying 
aside all self-indulgences and personal ambi- 
tions, they went to the trenches to do their 
utmost, even to the giving up of life, if neces- 
sary, for their country's flag and all that that 
flag means. But while they were overseas 
were we at home less in the service of our 
country ? Were we profiteering, growing rich 
out of the world's agony, and faring sump- 
tuously every day ? And now that those boys 
have come back can they sink to a less noble 
plane? No, the whole community must see 
that every man and woman, in the army or 
out of it, must be all of the time "in the 
service " in the very spirit of soldiers. Young 
men and women in college, considering the 
[63] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

choice of a life work, are often urged to 
choose " Christian callings." Any work that 
meets human need is a Christian calling, one 
as truly as another, whether it be making 
laws in Congress or selling shoes or deliver- 
ing milk or running a moving-picture show. 
The spirit of love in which it is done and the 
reality of the need make it Christian service. 

A soldier or a minister is not expected to 
get rich out of his pay. No more right has a 
banker or a manufacturer. It is hard to de- 
cide when to call a man rich ; but certainly 
one man has no more right to get rich by his 
" service " than another has. 

And no person can be idle and be a Chris- 
tian at all. A Christian is one who serves. 
Try to think of Jesus as idle for a day. Why, 
he was so busy with the relief of sufferers that 
he had n't time to eat. When a man presents 
himself for church membership, the official 
board should ask him, not, "What do you 
[64] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

believe?" but, " What are you doing for 
the service of this community and the world ? ' ' 
Before Jesus' time labor was little respected. 
A mechanic belonged to a caste lower than 
that of the idle rich, or that of the fighting 
men. Since Jesus worked at a carpenter's 
bench, mechanics outshine kings. 



XVI 

Preachers often proclaim in earnest tones that 
what the world needs is Christ. This is the 
truth, but spoken indefinitely, it is really an 
uninforming assertion, and it leaves a very 
vague notion in the minds of the hearers. 
Often, we fear, the effect is a kind of mixture 
of mysticism and pessimism. It is pessimism 
so far as it leads men to despise ordinary 
duties and methods, and mysticism so far as 
it leads them to wait inactive for the coming 
of the miraculous. In a vague way it is often 
said that things will never be right in this 
world until society adopts the teaching of the 
Sermon on the Mount. Often the people who 
say this do not stop to think precisely what 
those teachings are, but they know that the 
Golden Rule is among them. 

The Sermon on the Mount is for the most 
[66] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

part a hyperbolical (and very beautiful) state- 
ment of the Three Beliefs and the Four Prin- 
ciples, in different aspects. Interpreted with- 
out common sense the Sermon on the Mount 
teaches indiscriminate almsgiving, neglect of 
provision for a rainy day, refusal to defend 
the weak from brutes, and many other ab- 
surdities. What the fair division of the profits 
of industry is cannot be learned from the Ser- 
mon on the Mount. That must be discovered 
by scientific study. The Christ whom the 
world needs is the Christ who lived the Four 
Principles and inspired men to live them. He 
never intended the Sermon on the Mount for 
anything but a series of glorious rhetorical 
suggestions. He never meant it as a substi- 
tute for exact thinking in concrete cases. 



xvn 

Chaplains and others who attempted religious 
work among the British and American sol- 
diers in France were astonished to find that 
the men knew so little about Christianity. 
They were at a loss to explain this. The 
blame has been laid on the churches, the 
ministers, the homes, the Sunday schools, 
and the public schools. The real explanation 
is that the Christian public — ministers and 
laymen alike — have all along been so be- 
fogged in their minds. The reason a reli- 
gious education had not been given to those 
men before the war broke out was that no- 
body had it to give or was giving it to any- 
body. 

What do the most regular and faithful 
Sunday-school scholars learn ? Little, indeed : 
an uncomprehended creed which does not 
[68 ] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

mention any one of the Four Principles ; some 
incidents in the lives of Abraham, Moses, 
David, and Solomon ; a little of the geogra- 
phy of Palestine ; a few incidents in the life 
of Jesus ; a few beautiful texts ; a few fine 
hymns, and how to celebrate Christmas and 
Easter. 

Could a thin equipment like that prepare a 
future soldier for the terrific experiences that 
met him at the front? 

Have you glanced through the catalogue 
of a theological seminary lately to see what 
fledgeling ministers are studying to prepare 
them to guide the laity in their life of love, 
service, freedom, and common sense? 

Some fine courses are given. And yet for 
the most part the menu offered is a surprising 
farrago of things that in the evolution of edu- 
cation have just happened to be stuck in. 
Most of the subjects have no more to do with 
what laymen need to know than any other 
[69] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

university courses that might have been 
selected at random. No intelligent selective 
principle is discoverable. 

What should a child study to prepare him 
to live the Christian life? What should a 
candidate for the Christian ministry study in 
order to be qualified to guide that child? 

In the first place, he should study what 
will teach him to love. Whatever will soften 
his heart and enlarge his sympathies and fill 
him with compassion like that of Jesus is the 
material we want. 

Then will come the nature and needs of 
man, his body, his mind, his long struggle 
upward toward light and freedom, and the 
present conditions of men in all parts of one's 
own city and of the world. For the Christian 
life is to be one long service to man. 

God has placed us in a material world to 
work out our destiny here. He is revealed in 
it. So the study of physical nature as a reve- 

[ 70] 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

lation of God's character and will must be a 
part of religious education. 

Since common sense is so essential in the 
Christian life, studies are needed that will 
develop the open mind, that will cultivate the 
judgment, that will free from superstition 
and all mistaken reverence for ancient au- 
thority. 

The young Christian should be thoroughly 
instructed in what good men are now doing 
in the service of mankind and the best up-to- 
date methods of doing it. 

Above all things religious education should 
deal with the facts of the present, the prob- 
lems of the individual and of society in our 
rapidly changing world. Assyriology, now 
studied in theological seminaries, is pretty 
remote. The history of the Jews is remote. 
The geography of Palestine is remote. Sun- 
day-school scholars are taught about the Dead 
Sea, but in the New Testament that sea is 
in ] 






THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

never once mentioned. The history of Chris- 
tian theology is remote. It has hardly more 
to do with the Christian life of to-day than 
the history of Alchemy has to do with the 
manufacture of T.N. T. 



XVIII 

Will Christendom ever be reunited? In the 
sense generally intended by the word, Jesus 
would have been the last person to wish 
Christendom united. Union in rites has al- 
ways meant formalism. Union in ecclesiastical 
government has always meant tyranny. Union 
in doctrine — Orthodoxy — has always meant 
intellectual paralysis and death. 

Some warm-hearted people, deeply grieving 
over the disunion of Christendom and ready 
to go to the limit in concessions, have pro- 
posed that we all agree to require nothing 
more than faith in the Lord Jesus and bap- 
tism in the name of the holy Trinity, and 
that we recognize as fellow Christians all who 
meet these two simple conditions. The spirit 
of the proposal is tender and beautiful. But 
does not the form of the offer spring from a 
[ 73] , 



THE YOUNG MAN FROM JERUSALEM 

mistake as to the nature of Christianity? 
Narrowly viewed, is this not a proposal to 
ignore the Four Principles for which alone 
Jesus cared, and to make dogma and ritual 
the basis of fellowship? And would not this 
test, liberal as it is meant to be, still exclude 
many sincere followers of Jesus ? 



XIX 

What is to be hoped is that as the mists of 
misconception clear away, the whole world 
will see the four great peaks white against the 
azure background of the three great beliefs. 
Then men will understand what Christianity 
is. Then, recognizing one another as broth- 
ers in the one great family of God, all will 
freely advance in ever-increasing intelligence, 
glad in mutual services, each giving to all and 
receiving from all in boundless tides of recip- 
rocated blessings. In such a consummation 
Jesus will see of the travail of his soul and 
will be satisfied. 



THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 
1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



mm 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





014 020 980 6 



